Blog: Summer progress for Aston Villa may wash away some of the doubts

Over the last week or so, we've heard a lot of talk of a potential sale of Aston Villa, with the Sun reporting that Randy Lerner had actively chosen to put the club on the market.

Since then, the club have made moves to distance themselves from such a plan with chief executive Paul Faulkner making statements that implied that Lerner is not actively looking to sell Villa.

For some fans, this news has come as a blow. After all, following several years of almost unrestrained spending, Villa fans have struggled to come to terms with austerity, challenging football and too much time in the relegation zone.

The answer, in the eyes of many, is to start reinvesting in the club, with more expensive players touted as the solution to a team that is light on top flight experience.

However, Villa's financial state - or at least their state in the post Martin O'Neill era - is far from rosy. Despite TV revenue figures of £80m this season - a new record - the accounts indicate that the majority of that sum (and the majority of the club's profits) have needed to be reinvested, not into players, but into balancing the books.

In the abstract, such an attitude could be seen as a very positive step. After all Villa, like any other business, need to be self-sufficient in order to comply with Financial Fair Play. Where issues start to crop up is when we look at how the club got into this mess in the first place.

Let me state my view clearly before I go on - I have the utmost faith and belief that our chairman is an honest, decent guy who wants what is best for the club. Similarly, I also feel that our chief executive is more than capable of increasing the club's revenue structures though new and improved partnerships.

My issue, and what I feel is the issue that plagues most Villans' opinions on the club's board, is that I have little to no faith that where the club is at in pure football terms is anything other than blind luck.

Yes, things were different when Villa were bought by Lerner's Reform Acquisitions Limited. Manchester City, now one of the contenders for the league title, were still labouring under the command of Thaksin Shinawatra, and despite the Thai's fortunes, they were nowhere near the spending levels under now-owner Sheikh Mansour.

Back then, brute force spending - in a league that was unrestricted in spending restraints - was one way to progress. Whether it was the best way to progress, however, was debatable as whilst Manchester City were nothing like they are today, Chelsea had already shown that they had far more money than Lerner could ever have spent, even if every cent of the American's fortune was lavished on Villa.

At the time, and to a certain extent even now, I felt that Lerner went in as an extremely well-meaning - if naive - person. That O'Neill was given so much money has since been seen as the never ending stick with which to beat Villa's former manager, yet few question just how that happened.

For example, are we seriously expected to believe that O'Neill - an admittedly strong-willed and charismatic individual - had somehow been spending the money without the authority of his chairman, or without the knowledge of then chief operating officer Faulkner?

Such an explanation seems to be either implausable, foolish or both. That it took until Faulkner's promotion to chief executive to start limiting spending feels very much like this was a club previously based on naive hope and ploughing cash into a manager, all the time whilst the wage bill ballooned to dangerous levels.

Whatever the explanation for the motives of the board before O'Neill left, it was the board who was signing transfers off, and it was the board that took years to step in, presumably hoping for a Champions League success to help repay the investment in the team.

In that sense, the O'Neill era spending was something that the club authorised and agreed with - to say anything different would be crazy - and thus it is hard to praise the board for their subsequent fixes.

Now, we can attribute some of the board's choices to little more than poor luck. For example, Gerard Houllier's unfortunate health issues were invariably not able to be foreseen, and the chairman was unlucky that many of the players paid for by his own funds turned out to be duds. In that sense, he was just trying to let the football men get on with the football.

Unfortunately, problems start to arise when we look at other choices made by the club. The appointment of Alex McLeish, whilst understandable given both the poor financial state and somewhat-thankless task of rebuilding Villa, was one in a series of poor PR decisions.

I should, in all honest, be reticent to even use the word PR when it comes to Villa's board, largely because the default communication option from the club's chairman appears to be silence - leaving it less a case of PR, and more a case of a knowledge vacuum.

Why? Villa choose, through their own strategy, to avoid engaging in conversations with the fans. Yes, the club have organisations such as the Aston Villa Supporters Trust, but there is rarely - if ever - any information given by the club's owner.

Yes, his decision to remain silent is a free choice, and one that fans must respect, but there is a real feeling amongst the fans that maybe some fears could be allayed if Lerner just gave an indication of what the plan was.

The issue with saying nothing is that, sadly, the crowds will make up the blanks in order to make sense of the situation. In some instances, the blanks that are filled end up painting Lerner as a man hell-bent on destroying the club. Others try and read between the lines and say Lerner is just trying to break even, either to make the club self-sustaining, or to facilitate an exit.

The reality is that most of the above is likely irrelevant. Yes, the club have denied that they are actively up for sale, but I would find it hard to believe that Lerner would stay if a consortium offered him £250m to go tomorrow - his life would be far easier drinking cocktails on a beach somewhere with his family than it would be trying to appease Villa fans.

With all that said, such an offer - one which would persuade Lerner to leave - is unlikely to be forthcoming from anyone with a sensible business mind. Yes, there are people who might be able to raise £250m, but Villa don't stack up as a value proposition - the club may be making some slow progress under Paul Lambert, but they are not worth almost four times their sale price in 2006.

The only people who would make such a deal are the reckless - those who have that much money that they don't care what is spent, and even that option is closed off with the advent of Financial Fair Play restrictions.

So, as we reflect on a week where the club was rumoured to be for sale, only to be quashed several days later, perhaps we can realise that Lerner may well have made mistakes during his time at the club, and may even have stumbled upon Lambert through luck, but that his intentions - whilst naive and previously overly-trusting - are clean.

Villa may or may not have a new owner come next season, and such a change may delight some, but the reality is this - be careful what you wish. Whilst Lerner may not win prizes for being the most effective club chairman, nor may he be even liked by many, he's far from the figure many paint across the internet, and the likelihood is that the summer may even allow progress that washes away some of the more recent doubts.

You can follow Matt Turvey's regular opinions at his own site, Aston Villa Life at http://www.astonvillalife.com, via the site's Twitter account @astonvillalife, or via his own Twitter account @mturvey_star.